Professor Anna Rowlands has been a visiting scholar at Gonville & Caius College for four months, providing an opportunity for her to work on her latest research project. 

The St Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham is writing a book called How to Love the World.

Featuring Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil and Gillian Rose, whose political philosophy has been examined by Anna for two decades, How to Love the World looks at the world in an unflinching way, exploring themes of love and justice in difficult times. 

The three 20th century Jewish women, all social philosophers, crossed over between Judaism and Christianity, politics and theology, Anna says. She adds: “Each of them had a very particular impact on social and political thought in the twentieth century, with ongoing relevance now. And whilst they don’t agree about the solutions to political problems, they agree on many of the baseline questions we should ask.”.

“They see religious traditions as part of the worldview that gives birth to liberalism and plays a part in how we think about freedom, mutual obligation and justice, thus helping us think about good citizenship. Crucially, each of them is also writing about the way in which religion (and theology) also ‘fails’ us and is utilised as a source of harm in the word.”

The trio’s social philosophy is theologically literate yet secular, and two of them died young – Simone Weil aged 34, Gillian Rose aged 48 – leaving “half completed canons of work”, Anna says.

She adds: “They've managed to leave something really significant behind to the world, but in a sense were never able to fully systematise that. I'm interested in the half-finishedness of their projects as well and what they hand on to another generation.”

The sense of community is a key theme. People are drawn to communities, which can also be violent (within and without).

Anna says: “All three are interested in the ways in which fascism becomes a possibility, including in democratic political communities. Democracies in themselves are not immune from these dangers.

“History never repeats itself exactly, but I’m interested in the ways in which they allow us to be alert to fascistic tendencies. Right now we live in a world where there's huge amounts of violence being enacted in the name of community, so I'm really interested in how their work enables us to think the draw to community and to the love of a community of human beings, and yet the violence of community.”

Anna, pictured to the left of the Pope

Group-think can sometimes be in contrast to Hannah Arendt’s thought that “you are obligated to think what you’re doing”. 

Anna adds: “They’re all convinced you have to stake yourself in the world, that you have to act, and you have to take the risk of acting even with imprecise information, uncertainty. That there is a leap of faith into the world of necessary political action. They would be unsurprised, depressed and fascinated by the way religion is presented by contemporary authoritarian leaders.

“They would want us to be sufficiently religiously literate to understand why much of this use of religion and particularly Christianity is problematic and theologically incoherent and yet is still part of a long tradition of violence enacted in the name of Christianity, and that liberalism itself is not without its own theological narratives!”

Anna was a Social and Political Sciences undergraduate student at Girton College from 1993 to 1996 and taught at the University of Cambridge for 8 years before moving to Durham 10 years ago.

She says: “It's been really great to be back somewhere I have spent 13 years of my adult life, living, teaching, researching. The thing I miss most about Cambridge is the interdisciplinary colleagueship and the sense of a collective intellectual enterprise. 

“It doesn’t matter what discipline you’re in, there’s a natural curiosity and a sense that there is one project, which is knowledge and scholarship and pursuit of truth in a vigorous but also fun and convivial way. That refusal to accept boundaries between subjects and yet the rigor within subjects is something that I really value about Cambridge. 

“There is a sense that there’s a virtue in the living of a common life – eating together, socialising together, thinking together – and I don’t think you quite get outside of a properly collegiate model. It’s been great to come back and experience that again. The Fellowship could not have been more welcoming and hospitable. Four months at Caius has been the best of Cambridge for me, and I am very grateful.”